


Hold your head high, heavy heart.

by hellodestroya



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodestroya/pseuds/hellodestroya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon reflects on his relationship with Robb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold your head high, heavy heart.

Robb is many things, Jon knows. He is a son, a brother, an heir. There are expectations placed on him that Jon is free of. While he desires not the claim to a title, Jon sometimes wishes he could carry his brothers burdens. He can't remember a time before Robb, before he loved him with everything he had, maybe even parts he should of kept for another. He would carry the world on his shoulders for Robb, even though Robb would never ask him too. He swore his allegiance once, during a game, an innocent oath, but he isn't sure if Robb knew how much he meant it.

" I swear to you and the House of Stark, my life and my blade and my heart until my death or until my Lord see's fit to release me."

And then Robb had tapped him once on each shoulder with a stick and released him later on before dinner. His heart had never been free, it had never been his own, had it? Not since long before he willingly gave it up. Parts of it belonged to Arya and Bran and the others but those parts didn't ache with the knowledge Robb would be expected to take a wife some day. That their games as children were only ever games. Back when Robb would take his hand and drag him through the passages and corridors,  when he protected Jon from imaginary Others even when Jon was suppose to be playing the soldier. The kisses on his face when he cried and Robb tried to soothe him as his own mother might have. He remembers when Robb began to put distance between them. When Bran became the buffer between their bodies when they all slept together like a litter of pups. When he stopped holding his hand, stopped his fingers lingering against Jon's skin. It had hurt then, and worse when Theon had made jokes of it, of Jon's disinterest in any girls and his clingy tendencies to his brother. Robb had said nothing in either of their defense, just told Theon off and changed the direction of the conversation. 

There were times when Jon could not sleep and Robb sat with him, and stroked his curls and his cheek and told him pretty things. Robb stopped coming to him there, too. He knows he would swear his life and anything else Robb asked a thousand times over. He knows who his Robb is, and sometimes, though he often wonders where he has gone, his Robb can be seen again. His Robb was not just the heir or just a brother. He was his protector, his comfort, his secret place to go when he had nothing else. He keeps those memories close, and they grow up, and he wonders sometimes if he imagined it all. If maybe he just expected something of the young Stark, too.

 

He knows things will change. There will be wives and Robb will take over for his father, become a father himself. Jon won't. He will take the Black because he can't stay and watch Robb become a sum of everyone's expectations. Not because Robb can't do it, but because he can. He did it all those years ago, made space between them, and Jon isn't sure he can handle being any farther from him while remaining so close. Those are things he cannot free Robb from, and those are burdens he cannot carry. Besides, he has his own, and they weigh heavy on his heart. A heart that is not his own.


End file.
